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Pedal Vibration. If you step on the pedal and feel a vibration, you're in for some troubleshooting. There are lots of things which can cause the pedal to vibrate when you apply the brakes. Rememeber, if your car is equipped with ABS (most are these days), the pedal will seem to vibrate when you brake very, very hard. The system does this to keep them from locking up.
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Brakes Dragging. Your brakes should let go immediately as you take your foot off the pedal. If they don't, this can cause brake overheating as well as premature wear to brake parts.
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Brakes Squealing or Whining. Brakes make those high pitched noises for a few reasons, some of which are no big deal at all.
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Brakes Make a Clunking Sound. Sounds that go "clunk" are generally not good sounds. This is true for brakes. A clunk means something down there needs to be fixed.
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If your battery charging light comes on while you're driving, you should pull over as soon as it's safe. This light comes on when your alternator is not making electricity and the car is running off of battery power alone. You can drive a short distance on the battery, especially if you turn off most of your car's electrical items (like the radio, air conditioning, etc.), but there's no way to know how far you'll get before it dies.
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Your dashboard's instrument cluster has a light on it that either says "OIL" or looks like an old fashioned oil can. What should you do if you see this light while you're driving?
Stop the car! This is one warning light that isn't joking. The oil light comes on when your engine suffers a drop in oil pressure. Without oil pressure it can't lubricate itself, and the result is self-destruction, meaning you have to do some seriously expensive internal engine repairs.
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If you engage your emergency brake, you'll notice a light on the dashboard that says "BRAKE" or "PARK." This will give you a heads up if you forget to release the brake before you take off. But what if your emergency brake is off and you still see the light?
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CHECK ENGINE. There's nothing fun about those two words. There's also not a lot of logic to be gathered from them. Check engine? Could they be a little more specific? Nope, they can't. That's because the Check Engine light comes to life if anything, and we do mean anything isn't 100% under the hood. This means that you could be staring at a major repair, or your gas cap could be too loose (no kidding).
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Diagnosing your fuel system can be frustrating enough, but turn the irritation level up a few notches if you've been through it from top to bottom and still don't know where the problem lies! If you suspect a fuel pressure regulator isn't holding its own but can't find anything wrong with it, try checking out the vacuum line. A leak can appear in the vacuum port of the FPR (mechanic speak for fuel pressure regulator) and cause it to lose fuel and pressure through the vacuum hose.
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At some point the powers that be decided that it would be easier to figure out what was wrong with your car if it just told them what the problem was. Sounds like a great idea, right? In some ways it was, but there are 10,000 different diagnoses your car can give, so putting your finger on the right one can be difficult.
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